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How Should We Then Live? The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture Paperback | Pages: 288 pages
Rating: 4.17 | 11394 Users | 442 Reviews

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Title:How Should We Then Live? The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture
Author:Francis A. Schaeffer
Book Format:Paperback
Book Edition:Anniversary Edition
Pages:Pages: 288 pages
Published:April 1st 1983 by Crossway Books (first published 1975)
Categories:Philosophy. Christian. Religion. Theology. History. Nonfiction. Christianity. Cultural

Chronicle In Favor Of Books How Should We Then Live? The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture

How Should We Then Live is a discussion of how philosophy, art, and music have changed throughout history, and what these changes say about the human race and where we are headed.

This book reads like an art history class. Schaeffer takes you through history chronologically, through the dark ages, the renaissance, reformation, the enlightenment, all the way into modern time. Over this time period, art goes from being realistic and detailed to being highly abstract. Music becomes more dissident, fragmented. Popular philosophy becomes heavy on relativism and abandons the notion of universal truth. All of these things are a reflection of our worldview: we have become a people who are fractured, isolated, and lost, not interested in seeing things for how they really are, unable to believe in anything concretely, and with nothing solid to stand on. And when people, countries, or empires don't have anything solid to stand on, the smallest crises can cause them to collapse.

Here are a few quotes:

"But even people who believe they are machines cannot live like machines, and thus they must "leap upstairs" against their reason and try to find something which gives meaning to life, even though to do so they have to deny their reason."

"...the Greeks found that society - the polis - was not a strong enough final authority to build upon, and it is still not strong enough today. If there are no absolutes, and if we do not like either the chaos of hedonism or the absoluteness of the 51-percent vote, only one other alternative is left: one man or an elite, giving authoritative arbitrary absolutes."

"I believe the majority of the silent majority, young and old, will sustain the loss of liberties without raising their voices as long as their own life-styles are not threatened."

"Edward Gibbon said that the following five attributes marked Rome at its end: first, a mounting love of show and luxury; second, a widening gap between the very rich and the very poor; third, an obsession with sex; fourth, freakishness in the arts, masquerading as originality, and enthusiasms pretending to be creativity; fifth, an increased desire to live off the state. It all sounds so familiar. We have come a long road since our first chapter, and we are back in Rome."

It's definitely worth a read.



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Original Title: How Should We Then Live? The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture
ISBN: 0891072926 (ISBN13: 9780891072928)
Edition Language: English

Rating Containing Books How Should We Then Live? The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture
Ratings: 4.17 From 11394 Users | 442 Reviews

Assess Containing Books How Should We Then Live? The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture
Religious or not, one must admit that Dr. Schaeffer is as scholarly a theologian as one might find. This book is worth reading as much (perhaps more) for its survey of Western Culture as for its Christian ethic.

What an incredible synopsis of the rise and fall of Western thought and culture! The cycles we as humans have gone through to get to the point we are at now are shocking yet at the same time predictable. The responsibility of influencing our culture with God's divine revelation is overwhelming! Great time line in the back. Every Senior in High School should read this before going to college.

This is the first book I've read by the Swiss theologian, pastor and philosopher Francis Schaeffer. I found it very intriguing--a great overview of western thought from ancient Greece to 1976 (when the book was published). Schaeffer stresses how a Christian worldview has fostered much of the scientific advancement, art and law seen in the west. He traces a shift and subsequent decline with the renaissance, when humanism began. With man as the "measure of all things," culture takes for granted

Really enjoyed this. Full of insight and thought provoking topics.

What an incredible synopsis of the rise and fall of Western thought and culture! The cycles we as humans have gone through to get to the point we are at now are shocking yet at the same time predictable. The responsibility of influencing our culture with God's divine revelation is overwhelming! Great time line in the back. Every Senior in High School should read this before going to college.

Although Francis' Schaeffer is not a scholar in the modern sense or standard of his day or today, he was a Christian intellectual who examined his day with other thinkers and brought forth important analysis and thoughts. In a sense, I could see Schaeffer as prophetic or ahead of his time as in this day an age of the new Atheist "Brights" and modern/post-modern scholarship seeking it's foothold in czar posts and public policy in a condescending manner where any type of moral or religious views

How Should We Then Live is a discussion of how philosophy, art, and music have changed throughout history, and what these changes say about the human race and where we are headed.This book reads like an art history class. Schaeffer takes you through history chronologically, through the dark ages, the renaissance, reformation, the enlightenment, all the way into modern time. Over this time period, art goes from being realistic and detailed to being highly abstract. Music becomes more dissident,

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